CUMMING, Ga. — A new and improved Cumming Library will open to the public before the end of the year! But, in order for the renovations to take place, the library will be closed from late October through early December.
“It is a small renovation in that we are not going to have walls coming down or going up,” Library Director Anna Lyle said. “It's just going to be a complete refresh of all our interiors, the carpet, the tile, and the paint. Public restrooms will also be getting a facelift, so we're very excited about that.”
The last major renovations occurred in 2007, and Lyle says it’s time for some upgrades.
“Last year alone, we had close to 120,000 people come through our doors,” she said. “Put that over 12 years, and we've had well over a million sets of feet walk across this carpet and use this building since the last time we refreshed any of the interiors.”
The total for this project, which is funded through a grant in addition to savings, comes to $320,000, according to Lyle.
“A major part of that is for the tile and re-carpeting which is $273,000,” she said. “We recently bid that out and finished that process.”
Lyle says they’re excited about the renovations, but closing the 25,000 square foot building is always challenging.
“We tried to put everything that would require the building closing into this phase of it,” she said. “So rather than do carpet now and tile later, we try to say we want multiple trades working at one time. So we condensed it into a 7-week period. From October 14th until December 1st, we will be closed, and we think we can get it all done in that time. Our contractors tell us that they can.”
In that 7-week period, the public will have no access to the Cumming Library. But, it’s not all bad news for patrons who frequent the library.
“We will be doing a few things ahead of time to help with the transition,” Lyle said, “We're making it where people can stock up worry-free, so anything checked out from September 30th until our last day that were open on [October] 13th will not be due until December 9th.”
As for the library employees, Lyle says they will still have opportunities to work. However, the work will be much different than what they’re used to.
“Really the main difference is they won't be working weekends which will be a nice break, but they will be here actually doing a lot of manual labor,” she said. “In order to re-carpet, we will be moving all the shelving except the adult shelving, so all of the books have to be moved. If there's people who can't do that or there's issues, they would work at other branches or they would work at one of our headquarter departments, for example processing materials or something like that.”
After closing for renovations, Lyle says the library will reopen on December 2nd with the meeting room opening a week later on December 9th.
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